


show him the radishes Luke

by blindbatalex



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Cooking fic, Crack, Everyone Is An Asshole, M/M, Manchester United, but it's only bc his heart is breaking and he'd cry o/w :(((, here is united crack to prove it!!!, i keep saying i promise im a manc and voila, i turned my nostalgia and unresolved transfer angst into crack welp, luke has a terrible sense of humor, micki is a good cook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 10:42:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11735394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: The team decides to do one last dinner before Memphis leaves for Lyon, or rather they decide thatHenrikhshould cook them one last dinner before Memphis leaves for Lyon. Chaos ensues when half of Henrikh's cooking supplies go missing, because apparently no one other than him know how grocery stores work.Well Carrick does. If only he wasn't overlooked for the job he was perfect for yet again.





	show him the radishes Luke

**Author's Note:**

> This is utter and sheer crack. Literally everyone in the fic is an asshole, except for Zlatan who has a heart of gold. Please don't take seriously!

Henrikh never forgot the first time his _sarma_ was good enough to impress his grandmother. For one the praise of his grandma -- the approving smile on her kind face, the way her eyes half closed when she took her first bite because finally, finally Henrikh’s cooking was that good -- meant the world to Henrikh. But it was also because in the years that followed he would often think back to that day and remember the words his grandma had uttered. Words whose wisdom he was too young and foolish to understand at the time. 

“Being able to cook as well as do Henrikh is a gift but a dangerous one. Your food will bring such happiness and warmth to the hearts of those you feed, but they will take advantage of if you are not careful. People, even decent people sometimes turn into heartless monsters in pursuit of heavenly food.”

*

When he left BVB he had promised himself that he wouldn’t let the same cycle repeat at United. And in the end all it took for his careful efforts to go to waste was one potluck dinner. A single dinner where he’d brought his stuffed bell peppers because it was early in the season but the results weren’t going their way and the ball and the grass weren’t coming alive with that magic spark at Henrikh’s feet and yes, judge him all you want but Henrikh was a stress cooker.

“This is fucking incredible,” Young had said, his eyes closing halfway with his first bite because Henrikh’s cooking was that good, “guys you _must_ come and try this --whatever this is.” Henrikh had watched with something akin to horror as first Carrick and Valencia and then Rooney and Fellaini shuffled towards the table where the food was laid out. He had known that all was lost among the grunts of delirious joy when the Spaniards finally found their way to his dolma. 

Young had also come to him after training last week, mere hours after they all found out and said, mate, so I was thinking right. it wouldn’t be proper to send Memphis off without a team dinner, and Henrikh knew. He knew like he knew his own name where the conversation was headed.

Which was why he had nodded and suggested they go to Wing’s or some such place but Young was too crafty, too good at tugging at the strings of Henrikh’s (admittedly weak) heart. He had put on his most serious face, looked into the distance and solemnly said he will never get to have your sarma again, the poor kid, and. 

Well, maybe it was the praise of his cooking. Maybe it was because Henrikh had left too many times too; lived too long afraid to acquire more than two suitcases worth of belongings. Or maybe it was seeing behind each smile and joke Shaw cracked that day the performance of the act; witnessing in that split second before he answered the lads’ regular barbs the effort it was taking him to not to come apart at the seams.

His grandma was right though. And as he rummaged in his kitchen to see where half of the supplies he had set apart to cook for eighteen hungry men went, Henrikh understood that he was too foolish to understand the wisdom of her words, even now, all these years later.

*

“Anything we can help with?” Memphis asked as he poked his head in and like clockwork Shaw’s head followed a second later, a few inches above Memphis’. This question, like every good cook knew was a code word for _we are getting hungry, is there anything you want to feed us while you continue to sweat and toil for our benefit_ ninety percent of the time.

(Unless it was Nuri Sahin. Nuri walked into your kitchen with a _aaaaaaa brother yani you are cooking that wrong_ , proceeded to lecture you on how the Turkish version of whatever dish you were making was far superior and all the while ate one third of your half finished cooking. Henrikh still had nightmares about it sometimes, even safe here in Manchester.)

Henrikh closed the last drawer there was to go through in the kitchen with a bang. He was in no mood for the games of the hungry. It was going to take him forever to cook for that many and his cooking supplies were nowhere to be found. Worse, these two, --who wouldn’t know where to look for the word _serious_ in a dictionary on a good day-- had been bouncing off the walls since they came in and drawing Henrikh insane.

Oh yeah, by the way. A third of the team was chilling in his living room with beers dropping pretzel crumbs onto his sofa, all here under the pretense of _in case you needed help._ As you do.

Henrikh counted to three. And then half because he had some prep to do with what the ingredients he still had and half out of sheer vindictiveness told the kids _oh how kind of you to ask I do need someone to go grocery shopping actually_.

*

“You’ve like been to a grocery store before, right?” Memphis asked as he started the car. Micki had given them a shopping list but not everything there made sense to Memphis and also Micki looked like he might punch him in the face if Memphis asked the wrong question.

_How do grocery shops work?_ sounded like it belonged squarely in that category.

“Yeah, of course. I used to go all the time with my mum when I was young.” Luke sounded chipper, in the way he did before big games, his confidence a slab of granite, smooth and cool.

Memphis saw right through it, like he did before the big games, and offices of the physios and in the quiet of the night.

“How young?”

“I don’t know, like five maybe?” and there it was. They were royally screwed.

Memphis took advantage of a red light and whipped his head to his left. Luke returned his gaze right away. He was smiling at Memphis, chipper, confident. His short hair looked even more aggressively blond in the ambient light of the overcast day, his eyes almost a metallic green. 

_His Luke._

Memphis turned his eyes back to the road, turned the music up. 

“I mean, right?” he muttered more to himself--more against himself--than anything else, “Millions of people go to Tesco everyday and shop just fine. It’s not rocket science.”

*

“Do you not get door-to-door delivery?” Young asked in the living room, his brows knitted together. Henrikh was beginning to think that he was quite possibly the Nuri Sahin of this team with his constant demand for food and needling questions.

“No,” Henrikh said with a roll of his eyes, “I spend hours after training each day in Sainsbury’s hunting down just the right carrot.”

The room let out a collective gasp--except for Carrick--the sarcasm going a mile above everyone’s heads. “Oi oi,” the veteran player said, “Leave the lad alone. I go grocery shopping all the time with the wife too. It’s soothing.”

Maybe he reminded Henrikh of his great-uncle at times but Carrick was a good soul. (Or, like his great-uncle he was strategic enough to know that the road to great food lay in taking the side of the cook no matter what the dispute. One could never be sure.)

*

As it turned out Tesco was a lot more fun than either of them imagined. Really had it not been for fear of press the aisles would make an excellent track for a shopping cart race to the death. Then again that was not taking Luke’s awful sense of humor into account.

“This rice is wild,” Luke said, rice bag in hand, still laughing at his own terrible pun. 

Memphis deemed it a duty to let the pretty idiot know. 

“You know you really aren’t funny right?”

“Hey, Michael always laughs at my jokes.” Luke threw the bag of brown rice into the shopping cart with a chuckle. 

“That’s because Michael is an old person. Old people have a weird sense of humor.” 

Instead of subsiding Luke’s grin had grown even wider. To shit-eating levels even.

“Yeah but you laugh at my jokes too.”

Memphis punched him in the arm because he deserved it (and because Memphis was still here, so close that all he had to do to feel the warmth of Luke’s skin under his hand was to reach out.)

“That’s because you are an idiot Luke. Big difference.”

 

*

 

“Well kill Pep.” Zlatan said, something cold, and truly scary in his eyes. “I don’t know,” Basti replied, pensive but stubborn just the same. “I think Pep could make a great husband.”

Zlatan’s face contorted into something akin to disgust. 

“I still don’t know how all of you agreed to fuck Klopp” Rooney offered. “I think Mou would be tons better in bed. Kinkier for sure. What do you say Henrikh?”

Henrikh looked up from the reverie he had allowed himself to drift into the moment Rooney, their captain of all people suggested they play fuck marry kill: manager edition to pass the time.

Oh, also yeah, it had been forty fucking five minutes since the two idiots left the house to go ‘grocery shopping.’ The dinner was definitely going to run late, his guests were going to grow hangry and it wasn’t like they made a ton of sense to begin with as demonstrated by the last ten minutes the room spent debating which out of Conte and Zidane would be more open to eloping.

“Carrots,” Henrikh said, getting up. “I will go wash the carrots, and maybe send a search party after Memphis and Shaw.” 

He reached out for his phone to call and shout some sense into his irresponsible helpers. But Zlatan stopped him with strong fingers on his wrist before he could.

“I will go grocery shopping if they aren’t back soon but let the kids be.” 

_You tell me that when you all turn into bloodthirsty wolves with hunger in another hour,_ Henrikh wanted to say but this was Zlatan and he valued his life thank you very much.

He sighed instead. He was born to suffer. It was better to accept that fate.

*

“Read the grocery list Luke, what does it say for rice?” Henrikh asked with raised eyebrows. 

Shaw pulled up the crumbled piece of paper from his pocket. It had taken the two of them an hour and five minutes to come back from a simple trip to Tesco and they were both grinning like idiots ever since they came in. 

“White rice; one large bag,” Shaw read.

“Right. And what color is the rice in my hand?”

Henrikh waited for the wheels in Shaw’s head to turn. 

“Oh,” said Shaw after a moment, “it’s not white if that’s what you are getting at. But -- but--” he continued, raising a hand to pacify Henrikh, or possibly defend himself against any flying objects that might soon come his way, the bloody idiot, “it’s _wild_.” 

He burst into laughter at--well actually Henrikh wasn’t quite sure just what he was laughing at. “Get it? We thought white rice was too plain, too boring. Needed some _color_.”

“Just so you know, I don’t approve of any of this either,” Memphis said, but he too was grinning like an idiot. “But wild rice is healthier, eh?”

Henrikh wanted to poke his (or their) eyes out with a spoon. This was worse than even Nuri, who criticized and lectured but never once gave him wild rice to make sarma with because it was ‘healthier.’

He took a deep breath. Reminded himself this was Memphis’ last meal with the team -- last night in Manchester -- and he could do this. He could survive the night and feed everyone without committing murder.

“Right,” he said in a strained voice. It kept every fiber in his body to remain calm. “I don’t see radishes either, where are they?”

“Oh.” Shaw went digging through the grocery bags. He was barely hiding a ridiculous grin again. Henrikh shuddered with dread at what was to come. 

He took out a stack of maybe a dozen cheap porcelain dishes.

“Ta-daa _ra_ -dishes!” he announced pronouncing ra- like la-

Henrikh saw red. He was advancing on Luke with carrot in hand like a club and it took Memphis and all of his strength to hold him in place. 

“It’s a joke--a silly joke, _I told you it was taking it too far Luke by God,_ we have radishes. Just--let me pull them out. _Luke show him the radishes._ ”

Shaw took out a clear plastic bag and carefully and slowly brought it to Henrikh’s line of vision with a _here, see we have it_. Henrikh stopped trying to lunge at Shaw and pushed Memphis’s hands away. 

He gave them both a death stare though for good measure. For once they both looked serious (or at the very least scared) enough and that was something. And at least they actually bought--

“Beets.” he said, his hand going straight back to the carrot. “These are beets.”

Memphis scratched his head; came over to inspect the vegetables again with a knitted brow. “Uh I’m pretty sure they are radishes? Look--small, round red--this is exactly what the Google pictures looked like? And aren’t beets like yellow?”

Henrikh surveyed both their faces. They looked, surprised and confused but genuine. He felt all his anger deflate at that, leaving in its place only defeat.

“You have no idea what radishes are do you?” he asked.

“I mean it’s a thing you eat, right? And we googled?” 

The mistake was his to begin with. Henrikh knew that now. He rubbed at his face. 

“Have you ever been to a Tesco before?” 

“Luke used to go all the time with his mum when he was five” Memphis deadpanned, fully serious. If this is what youth was like nowadays then maybe his great-uncle was right and they were all indeed doomed.

“Zlataaan,” he shouted into the living room, “you are going grocery shopping and going now.”

 

*

Over the years Zlatan had carefully crafted a public image as an arrogant, selfish son of a bitch but inside he was so soft, so caring that it offered him no protection whatsoever with people who actually knew him. 

From consoling a heartbroken Aguero in Manchester back in the day (all it had taken was a devastated _I’m too sick to fly but he’s hurting so much Zlatan_ from Leo) to eating ice cream with Carrick at 2 am and talking about retirement Zlatan was betrayed by his heart time and again. 

(The strangest of all over the years though was running into a very drunk Gary Neville in a bar in Valencia one night during a trip. The man had latched onto him and talked on and on about every little thing he hated about Scousers and Liverpool, starting from when he was five. He had barely said five words to the man before but they were both footballers, that had to count for something and well it didn’t take a genius to know managing Valencia must be hell. In the end though Neville had stopped and said as if talking about an exquisite painting, _but his eyes Ibrahimovic, blue and gray and like the ocean at dusk. What do I do about his eyes?_ Zlatan still had no idea what the bloody fuck all that had been about.)

He looked at the somewhat crumpled list in his hand as he started the car. He knew the kids would get over it. They always did. Footballers moved. There was always someone pretty to fill your bed. It was the rule of the land.

Or, maybe, if you really cared and the universe was kind enough you found your way back to each other. Time and again. Watched the cities and the faces change but not that, not _him_.

Either way they’d be alright. Zlatan smiled to himself for the briefest moment with the knowledge. 

In the near term though he had a more pressing issue. He dialed from memory and a voice, as old and dear to Zlatan as Zlatan himself said _hi_ from the car speakers.

“Hey old man,” he said into the mike, “you sound like someone who has definitely been to a grocery store in the last decade. A friend of mine needs to know what radishes are and how to find them in a supermarket.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading friends! Comments and kudos are always appreciated. 
> 
> \--Full disclosure: I am not Armenian and I'm a terrible cook. I tried to google stuff around and kept cooking bits vague (radishes and the carrots are for a salad okay) but if there is anything mortally offensive about the cuisine please let me know!
> 
> \--Also find me on [tumblr](https://blindbatalex.tumblr.com/) where I aggressively liveblog United games, cry over Carraville and make Big Vase art in paint. I always accept prompts though you know it might take me two months to actually get to them. :3


End file.
